


Bluebird, Undone

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [2]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Minor Beatrice/Wirt (Over the Garden Wall), Other, Slight Violence, this is what they meant by "cutting" Beatrice's wings right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 09:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21033695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: Wirt still has the scissors... now he can use them.





	Bluebird, Undone

Beatrice does her best to stay by Wirt. She understands the weight of a curse, even though she knows she’ll perish eventually and escape—unlike the unfortunate boy she’s grown affectionate for. She also knows the pain of letting one’s family down… and although Beatrice still _has_ her feathered loved ones it feels a little as if she’s lost them. At least, who they were before their plumes. She and Wirt are two victims of their own choices. The bluebird cannot bring herself to desert The Beast, or go to her family and admit her guilt.

But Beatrice is also losing patience for Wirt’s sadness. His stagnation. Frigid days and lonesome nights pass and the brambles enclosing him grow thicker, thicker, a _thicket,_ each serrated branch and poison-red berry gilded in ice. He closed his eyes the night he helped Greg escape and has not opened them since. He might as well be dead, for how eerily still he reposes in his thorn-studded tomb. 

After almost a week, Beatrice is tired of burbling encouragement to what might as well be a statue. She flies over the tangle that has overtaken the pilgrim and lets her frustration chase away the snow’s chill. 

“When are you going to give this up? It’s getting old.”

No response. Not that she expected one. An aggravated sigh drags from her beak. She hovers over Wirt, glowering at the messy part in his hair. 

“I get it—you’re sad. Life’s rough and then you die.” Her feathers ruffle at her mistake. Wirt is never going to die. Not unless someone else kills him, and takes his place. But Beatrice didn’t get cursed by a bluebird for being tactful. She blunders ahead, temper flaring hotter. “Are you going to feel sorry for yourself forever? Is that your plan—to become one with the weeds and just ROT?” Her rising voice scares the other songbirds from their roosts. She circles Wirt like a vulture, seething, searching for a sign that her rebukes are reaching him. When he doesn’t stir she divebombs his head. 

“You think you’re the only one with problems? I can’t even face my family after what I did to them. How long are you going to wallow? Would you _stop it,_ you melodramatic _creep?_ _What would Greg say?!_”

The Beast winces. The bluebird gasps and arrows down to sit in the thicket, right across from his bowed head. “Oh my stars… Wirt? Are you listening?”

“Beatrice…” Voice abraded from crying. Wirt lifts his chin, straining against the web of spiky vines that cut into his face, and the light from his eyes pierces through her and pins her to the twig she’s perched on. Meeting his gaze is like staring at the sun; everything else around it is utter blackness by comparison. 

Nevertheless, the fearless bluebird settles where she sits. “Hey, dope. Did I wake you up?”

He blinks, and through the spots in her vision Beatrice notes the red outlining his eyelashes, the paleness of his skin. He looks just like any other heartbroken boy… until he regards her again, painting everything sapphire. A crackling sound startles the bird—until she realizes that it’s only vines snapping away from his wrist, allowing him to offer her his open hand. 

Animal instinct commands her to fly. _Predator!_ screams her avian mind. This isn’t the same Wirt she almost betrayed to Adelaide. _That_ Wirt was claimed by the Unknown, and the thing in the brambles has the same purpose as the creature he’d slain. Yet Beatrice hesitates for a few seconds at most before hopping onto Wirt’s still-human palm.

“They love you.” Wirt sounds as if he’s swallowed broken glass, but the simple statement is so straightforward Beatrice doesn’t dare argue even when it feels like a slap in the face. “They miss you,” the boy continues. “They just want you to come back home. But… you know… I remembered something.” More vines snap, and he reaches under his threadbare cloak… 

To pull out a pair of golden bird-shaped scissors.

Beatrice’s heart hammers—equally hopeful and terrified that this is a trap. “Wirt?! When did you—”

Is that a _smile_ on his face? It doesn’t reach his eyes, but damn it, the jerk is _grinning_ at her!

“Sorry. I was kind of mad at you.”

She wants to scream at him. Slash at his dumb face with her claws. Tackle him. Kiss him. She settles for hopping up onto his shoulder and pushing her beak against his cheek, furious and happy and furiously happy. “You—_wonderful mistake of nature!_ I hate you. _Hate_ you.”

Around them the thicket is withering, berries plopping to the frozen soil. Beatrice eyes the glinting scissors anxiously, wondering how she’s going to manipulate them with beak and claws to cut off her wings. She swallows, glancing from Wirt to the scissors and back. “Could you… do you think you could—”

In response, Wirt carefully cups her in his free hand and moves her to settle on his knee. Beatrice holds a trembling wing out, waiting for the first slice of pain. The bluebird forces herself to look, because she might have no filter but she isn’t a _coward_ and she isn’t going to wimp out while her curse is broken. 

At the _crunch_ of bone cracking between the blades and Beatrice’s distressed shriek, Wirt stops. Devastation replaces his smile and he watches her severed wing flop between his legs, her blood staining her feathers red, horrified. He starts to hyperventilate. “S-sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t—”

“Other wing,” Beatrice grits out. “_Now._” She actually hits her remaining wing against the stained scissors. Then, raging, “DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES, IDIOT.”

Fractured bone. Cut tendons. The scritch of metal scraping metal. Despite Beatrice’s command, Wirt _does_ shut his eyes, shuddering, ill that he has just mutilated the only living thing in this purgatory that maybe cares about him and all he can do is fuck up and make the wrong call and wingless Beatrice is going to bleed to death right in his lap—

A lap which is _heavier_ than it was a second ago—

A breathy laugh hits his face and Wirt dares to sliver open one eye… and he jolts backward in shock. “B-Beatrice? You’re… you’re…”

She beams. Freckles and curly red hair. “It worked!” the girl crows. She throws her arms around his neck and squeezes until Wirt chokes. He stiffens like a wild thing—which, Beatrice remembers, he _is_—and she releases him suddenly, rocking back on her heels to put distance between them. She can finally change her flock back into people… but that also means admitting that it was her who’d gotten them cursed in the first place. Her grin sobers. “I gotta… I need to go find my family. I have to tell them it’s my fault that they’re bluebirds, and fix it.”

Wirt appears stunned, as if he’s recovering from a cruel prank. But eventually he nods in comprehension. “R-right. Good luck, Beatrice.”

Her heart swells at that sad smile. Beatrice picks up the scissors and clutches them tight. Pecks Wirt once on the cheek—fast, as if he’ll bite her—and stands. “I’ll be back. Don’t go growing more thorns while I’m gone, weirdo.” 

She leaves him sitting in the dirt, her discarded wings vanishing into dust so that not one single feather remains. The girl does return, eventually, like she promised, after her father and mother and all her many siblings have mouths instead of beaks. After they've had their long-awaited, tearful reunion, and they reclaim the mill to make it home again. The first chance Beatrice gets, she sets off into the woods to where she recalled Wirt gaping up at her in astonishment. Except… no matter how she calls his name or hunts for the blue fire of his eyes, Beatrice cannot find the new Beast. He has disappeared like her wings. 

And Beatrice remembers that she never actually told him “thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Track: "John My Beloved" by Sufjan Stevens


End file.
